Cathie from Canada

"Do not go gentle into that good night.
Blog, blog against the dying of the light"

Sunday, September 13, 2009

The new "Progressive Conservatives"

Maybe its just snark on my part, but I was amused that the participants in yesterday's rally in Washington apparently couldn't tell the difference between 70 thousand and 2 million -- no wonder these folks didn't notice the US deficit until Jan 21, 2009. Anyway, Matthew Yglesias was there and posts some photos and reports on the overall incoherence of their message. Here are some of his comments:

. . . there was very little sense that anyone had any actual specific complaint with Obama’s health care proposals. That one woman loves the confederacy. This guy thinks guns are great and diversity is stupid. Many protesters feel that abortion is murder and/or that Barack Obama is in league with terrorists. But nobody had a sign urging the president to adopt more stringent cost control measures, or slamming the concept of regulations to require insurers to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions.. . .Echoing a problem familiar to any liberal who ever tried to go to a rally to protest the occupation of Iraq only to find a bunch of guys with Free Mumia signs or Trotskyite sandwich boards extolling the virtues of the DPRK, an awful lot of today’s tea parties seemed to want to talk about obscure fringe causes that have nothing to do with health care or 9/11 or anything. . .Probably the weirdest thing about the Glenn Beck / Tea Party nexus to me is that it tends to rely so heavily on libertarian rhetoric and fear of incipient authoritarianism. These kind of sentiments would be a lot easier to take seriously if not for the fact that we didn’t see these people marching out in the streets when George W. Bush used the threat of terrorism to justify secret, illegal warrantless surveillance, detention without trial, torture, etc. . . . Jonah Goldberg, it seems to me, was the real pioneer in this brand of hypocrisy-driven hysteria—holding captives in secret where they’re hung by shackles from the ceiling and occasionally beaten to death is fine by him, but efforts to curb smoking are “liberal fascism.” And now this line of thinking seems to have completely taken over the right.

And don't read the next part if you're drinking anything -- over at Malkin's blog, the commenters are all excited and they were talking about how if the Republicans don't listen to them, then they're going to start a new party -- a "Progressive Conservative party".Well, the name's available, isn't it?Bhwa-ha-ha-ha-ha....